Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 2

by Chautona Havig

  Willow welcomed Marianne into the house while Christopher retrieved the gifts from the trunk of their car. Marianne gushed over the house. “Oh Willow! It’s beautiful in here. I just love it.”

  As Willow unloaded the packages from Christopher’s arms and placed them under the tree, she pointed upstairs. “Chad’s still asleep, I think, but I can show you around down here.” She spun in a slow circle, her hands outstretched. “This is obviously the living room. We heat with that stove and mostly spend our evenings in here. Now Chad comes and tries to beat me at Chinese checkers or sex-Yahtzee.

  “Sex what?”

  “You know how there are six columns on a Yahtzee pad? We play them all at once. I thought Sex-zee—you know for six and Yahtzee—was a good name for it, but Chad’s face looked something like Christopher’s does now, and he suggested I find another name. I just stick with Sex-Yahtzee for now.”

  “I see. We’ll have to see about helping you with that name. You’re right, it doesn’t have the kind of punch you were looking for does it?”

  “Nope. I thought Sex-zee was cute but,” she shrugged and then looked confused as Marianne and Christopher burst out laughing.

  Mid laugh, Marianne remembered something. “Did you say Chad is asleep?”

  “Yes. He’s up in my bed sleeping.”

  At that moment, they all heard a door open, another door close, and the shower come on in the bathroom. Willow smiled. “Guess he’s waking up.”

  She turned from her guests and led the way to the kitchen, entirely missing the look that passed between Marianne and Christopher.

  Chad stretched and rolled over. The darkened room let a stream of light in around the edges of the window. He reached for the shade and pulled it letting the light flood the room. He closed his eyes in protest and waited for them to grow used to the change slowly—very slowly. A journal lay on the table next to the bed. He fluffed her pillows and curled up with it reading. “What Mom would do if she saw me reading—voluntarily,” he murmured as he turned the page.

  December-

  It’s cold now. My life is both empty and full simultaneously. I miss my mother. My heart feels lost without her when the wind rattles the shutters and sends a chill through the old windows. We really should replace those windows.

  My heart is full, however. As much as I miss her, I am thankful for new friends—

  Chad flipped through the journal and realized it wasn’t Kari’s. He snapped it shut, closing his eyes. She still feels alone. I hate that, Lord. Then again, she knows she isn’t. That’s a beginning…

  A sound downstairs jerked him from his thoughts and prayer. Laughter—his father’s laughter. He jumped from the bed, grabbed his duffel, and locked himself in the bathroom.

  As he lathered with the lavender soap, dried with towels hung in the upper hallway and then stored on shelves with lavender sachets, Chad smiled. She’d taken over the house with her preferences. If journals were to be believed, Kari hadn’t liked lavender as much as Willow did.

  Chad pulled the sweater over his shoulders and glanced at the mirror. Unable to see anything but a shadowy figure in the steamy fog covering it, he took his towel and wiped the steam from the mirror and glanced at his reflection again. He liked how it looked, though he doubted anyone would believe him. It was warm and comfortable but soft. He just hoped it wouldn’t be too warm.

  He burst into the kitchen, greeting his parents with hugs. “Mom! Dad! You found us ok. Can I get you some more cider?”

  Chad refilled their cups, checked the stove’s wood supply, and pulled on a jacket by the back door. “I’ll be right back. The wood box is getting low.”

  Willow smiled. “He’s very good about keeping me in wood. I almost never have to fill the box anymore. Come on upstairs. I’ll give you a tour.”

  Chad entered an empty kitchen and listened in horror as Willow took his parents on a grand tour upstairs. “I didn’t make her bed,” he groaned inwardly.

  Marianne raved over the craft room, loved her hallway clothesline, and stepped almost reverently into Kari’s room, sensing that little had changed since the woman died. “This is a lovely room.”

  “I see Chad realized how cold those sheets are with that room closed off,” Willow commented as she straightened the covers and fluffed the pillow where he’d sat on it. “I guess that means my room won’t be very tidy!”

  They stepped across the hall where Chad’s duffel bag sat on the corner of the bed with the rest of the sheets and blankets tumbled in complete disorder. “Yep,” she laughed as she zipped the bag and dropped it on the floor at the foot of her bed. She pulled the sheets up to the top of the bed as she answered questions about the wood trim, the “wallpaper,” and the rugs.

  “Mom? Dad?”

  “Coming, laddie. Willow is just showing us the rest of the house,” Marianne called back to him.

  Downstairs, Chad grinned like a child. “So, presents before or after lunch,” he asked glancing at the clock. It wasn’t quite eleven o’clock. Too early for lunch.

  “He’ll never grow up,” Christopher groaned.

  “Better do gifts now or we’ll be miserable all through lunch!”

  “Who is Santa?” Marianne asked suddenly.

  “I’m Santa this year,” Chad insisted. “Chris gets it at home, so I’ve got dibs here.”

  He dug under the tree pulling out gifts for everyone. Seeing his name on one from his parents, Chad looked up quizzically. “But I thought we were doing our Christmas at New Year’s?”

  “We weren’t going to bring gifts for Willow and not have anything for you. You’ll just have less to open later,” his mother explained. To Willow she turned and said, “You will come with him, won’t you? We’re all hoping you’ll come.”

  “Of course! Thank you for inviting me. If I can get Caleb or Ryder out here, I’ll do it!”

  Chad passed a package to Willow from Cheri. She glanced at it and smiled before setting it aside. “Open it, Willow,” he urged eagerly.

  “I don’t want to. I’m saving it for Christmas at your house. Everyone will feel awkward if they’re opening gifts and I’ve already been enjoying mine.”

  Marianne’s eyes sought her husband’s once again. Willow watched the ocular conversation, wondering how two people could communicate so well without saying anything. Chad smiled at both of his parents when they looked at him. “I know. Wow, huh?”

  “Wow.” Christopher agreed.

  Without another word, Chad passed Willow another of his gifts. “Hopefully that’s what goes with the dulcimer.”

  “Did I tell you? I picked out a tune that sounds like ‘Greensleeves’ today.”

  “Rock on!”

  “Huh?”

  “Willow,” Chad began, “Your eloquence is absolutely mind-numbing sometimes.”

  Marianne’s gift was wrapped like a Christmas cracker, and as she unrolled the paper and the cardboard tubing, she pulled Willow’s table runner from the pile of wrappings. “Oh Willow! It’s beautiful!”

  “Did I get the colors right? I hoped—”

  “They’re perfect, thank you, sweetie!”

  Christopher pulled a tie from his box and the Tesdalls all laughed. Willow’s eyes widened. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No. We’ve just always joked about how no one has ever given him a tie. In fact, he swore if he ever got one, he’d wear it every day for a month,” Chad explained.

  “Well,” Willow said, grimacing. “I hope you like brown. I would have made it a little more interesting if I had known.”

  “How did you get the monogram colors so perfect?” Christopher asked marveling at the almost imperceptible satin stitching at the bottom of his tie.

  “I pulled strands of thread from the side of the fabric before I cut it out and used those instead of floss.”

  Chad couldn’t resist asking—if only to show his mother how the Finley women thought of things. “What made you decide to do that?”

  We always do
that when we want a subtle pattern. Mother figured it out once when she couldn’t match floss closely enough and just needed a little bit.”

  Marianne stared at her son. He saw her lower jaw fighting to hit the floor, kept in place only by sheer willpower. “You weren’t kidding, Chad.”

  “Open yours, Willow.”

  Willow unwrapped her box to find a CD holder filled with her old View Master cards. “This is so wonderful—how?”

  “I saw them upstairs when I went to get the loom, which is finished by the way, and realized that they’d be better protected in a case.”

  “I am so glad Mother talked me into the old maps on that box instead of the reel I wanted. That box will still be useful—maybe for my dulcimer strings and things.”

  They took their time opening presents, each person opening one before the next. Willow refused to open any but Chad’s final gift—the one that went with the dulcimer—and one package from Marianne and Christopher. As she pulled two tickets from the jeweler’s necklace box, Willow raised an eyebrow in question.

  “Chad said you liked Argosy Junction, and we heard they were coming to New Cheltenham this February, so I thought maybe you’d like to go,” Marianne explained.

  “You mean the singers are coming here? To Rockland?”

  “They started in Rockland actually, but they’re coming to New Cheltenham.”

  “Oh that is so exciting! Thank you! Chad can you take me?”

  “I hope so! Why do you think I suggested it?”

  “I should be ashamed of you, Chad,” his father warned mockingly.

  “But you’re not.” He pointed to his package. “Open it. I mean, I know you know what it is, but…”

  “But I don’t, do I?” Her fingers picked at the tape.

  “Dare you to rip it off—shred it. I dare you.”

  She still picked, driving him crazy. Just as he was ready to rip it from her hands and do it himself, she jerked the whole piece from it in one motion. “Daring me is very dangerous. Thought I should warn you.” She read the cover of the box. “Tuner—oh! It tells me when I have the notes right.”

  He passed her two triple A batteries. “It’ll need these.”

  Chad swooped the wrappings up in the largest piece he could find and rolled it in as tight of a ball as he could manage. He shoved the wad in the woodstove and clamped the door shut fast. Then, without a word, he passed Willow her dulcimer and settled into his favorite corner of her couch, waiting.

  She fumbled with the instrument, awkwardly holding it and visibly self-conscious. It wasn’t fair of him and he knew it. They weren’t alone. Her eyes darted to his parents at erratic intervals, yet he couldn’t bring himself to retract his request. If he didn’t, and he knew she wouldn’t, she would do it for his sake—because he had given her a gift, and she would show her gratitude even if it meant she was uncomfortable.

  However, as she played with the tuner, fighting to get each string just right, the misery that hovered around the corners of her eyes slowly disappeared. The first tentative plucks of the strings made no discernible tune. Whether she hit wrong notes or simply was not in time, he couldn’t tell. However, by the chorus, the sixteenth-century song wavered softly through the room. She closed her eyes, her expression determined as she listened for where to pluck next, but it didn’t help. Still, by the time she dropped her hand, the Tesdalls clapped enthusiastically.

  “Excellent!” Chad called. He pointed to the dulcimer and whispered to his parents, “She’s never played anything before—not just that.”

  “Really?” Marianne smiled. “That reminds me a little of Corinne. Remember the day she sat down at the piano and just picked out those notes from ‘Joy to the World?’”

  “That’s right…” Christopher agreed. “If you’re anything like her, you’ll pick it up in no time.”

  “Ok, enough of me showing off what I don’t know. I think it’s time for sandwiches and soup.”

  Christopher stood and clapped a hand on Chad’s shoulder as he started to follow Willow to the kitchen. “Willow, do you need Chad’s help in there?”

  “Oh, I’ll help her; you guys go exploring. Get Chad to show you that stream. Maybe you can fish with them next summer.”

  Oblivious to the underlying conversation, Willow disappeared into the kitchen with Marianne right behind her. Chad followed his father out the front door, down the porch steps and into the yard. “What’s wrong, Dad?”

  “Well, there are a few things actually. First, you might want to find a name for your version of Yahtzee. She called it Sex-Yahtzee a bit ago.”

  “Well that’s better than Sex-zee—barely.”

  “So we heard, but it’s just not appropriate.”

  Chad nodded. “You’re right. It just hasn’t come up since that night, and I forgot all about it. I’ll fix it.”

  “That’s probably not going to be necessary. You’re mom’s in there explaining why she should call it ‘Turbo-Yahtzee’ or ‘Brani-zee’ or something like that.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” He knew there was more to his father’s expression than a poor choice of a numerical term. “What else?”

  “Have you thought about our conversation at Thanksgiving?”

  This he hadn’t expected. His father seldom harped and never nagged. He’d watched his parents all morning, and his mother hadn’t done the majority of the non-verbal dialogue. “Yes, I have thought and prayed about it, and I just can’t do it.”

  “Because she’s not attractive enough? Because you don’t get along with her? Because you’re immune to her? What?”

  “None of that is true, and you know it. I care about Willow. She’s like Cheri but better because she’s here, and I don’t have memories of her embarrassing me in Jr. High or have pictures of me in the bathtub with her.”

  “You’re playing house here, Chad.”

  His father’s words dropped between them like an anvil on both of their feet. It hurt, and neither of them could move. “What do you mean?” Chad knew exactly what his father meant, but he prayed he was wrong.

  “You know what I mean, son. You’re playing house. We drive up to this house where you make yourself at home, sleep in your girlfriend’s bed—”

  “She’s not my girlfriend!”

  “Chadwick, don’t play semantic games with me. I am not the fool you think I am, and that I am seriously beginning to believe you are,” Christopher began. “This is a young, unmarried woman’s reputation. What you are doing here is nothing short of using her—enjoying almost all the privileges of marriage—but without the commitment that marriage requires. You’ll ensure the best of both worlds—for you. Meanwhile, she’s a wife with all of the work and emotional investment but none of the perks and yes,” he added at the sight of his son’s shocked face, “I mean sexual ones.”

  “Dad, no. She is like Kari when it—”

  His father interrupted him, his voice louder and more insistent than Chad had heard in years. “She may be asleep sexually, but she’s not dead. You’re going to arouse in her things she might never have had to deal with if it wasn’t for you, but you’re denying her the appropriate ground to allow them to grow and flourish.”

  Chad stared at his father dumbstruck. The words hit closer to home than Chad wanted to allow himself to consider. “Dad, I don’t think you understand—”

  Squeezing his son’s shoulders, Christopher held his son’s gaze for several seconds before speaking. “Chad, I love you. I see that you love that girl. You may think you are not romantically attached to her, but if you aren’t, you would be if you gave yourself half a chance. You drove away the city man; you drove away Chuck—”

  “I didn’t! She—”

  “Neither one of you realizes it, but you did. Chuck isn’t the most observant man in the world, but he’s not the dumb fool you mistake him for. He’s talked to me about how much Willow’s friendship meant to him, and now he feels like he’s lost it.”

  “Well that’s his probl
em for presuming more—”

  “No!” Christopher interrupted. “No. You can lie to yourself all you want. I can’t stop that. However, you will not lie to me. You’re using that girl, and it needs to stop now.”

  Chad leaned against the fence and stared across the farm. “I love it here. It’s like being at Uncle Zeke’s but better.”

  “I can see you do, son. Marry her.”

  “But,” Chad argued, “I can’t help but wonder what’ll happen if someone comes along, and she falls in love with him, and I’ve tied her to me.”

  Christopher turned to walk away but paused. “And, what happens to the woman whose reputation you trashed in your selfish enjoyment of your friendship when another woman comes along and you fall in love with her? How will Willow feel when she’s cast aside because Miss Heartthrob doesn’t want you hanging around another woman all the time?”

  “Oh, Dad, really! How callous do you think I am?”

  Chad’s father’s shoulders slumped. “Obviously more than I realized. Think about it, son. I’m concerned enough that if you don’t reconsider your behavior one way or the other, I’m going to consider taking this to your pastor.”

  The full impact of his father’s words hit Chad as Christopher walked away from him and rejoined the ladies in the house.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  “Why don’t you use the kid, Steve? He’s right there; she’ll probably be stupid and give him a key—”

  “Because you don’t take risks with something like this. I have a plan and we’ll work that plan. She’ll be begging for help by the time I’m done with her.”

  Nick Jaros asked no more questions. He knew when to question and when to agree. This was a time to be very agreeable. Instead, he’d have to invest in battery powered thermal underwear or something to keep himself from having frostbite of the—

  “Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Steve eyed him cautiously. “Should I be concerned?”

  “About what?” Nick ignored the trail of sweat coursing down his neck.